Shambhavi's Shells

       (This blog post is merely thoughts and opinions)     Humor is something that varies from person to person. My pod happened to be discussing a topic that we found extremely hilarious: bananas.   After Cecelia brought up cucumbers in The Importance of Being Earnest , we started to talk about foods that are seen as phallic, bananas being one of them.      while the phallic nature of bananas was what started this conversation on bananas, we began to talk about bananas and the different ways to peel them. Although this topic isn't as funny as a stand up comedian's act, we found that being able to relate to what's being joked about makes it easier to laugh and find the conversation interesting.        Something as mundane as bananas became a topic that we talked about for a good amount of time and enjoyed talking about. So does humor really vary from person to person or is how we experience humor what make...

      In Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, the story of two young girls in a temporary orphanage and then zooming in on their lives multiple years later, the readers are taken through an experiment where the factor of race has never been clarified.       Throughout the whole short story, Morrison never clarifies the race of the two girls, Roberta and Twyla, instead Morrison leaves it up to the reader to figure it out themselves. This reminded me of those “choose your story” books from when we were younger, where one small decision we took could impact the rest of the story's experience for us. For those who assigned a race to each character from the beginning, the story could have become confusing, or our perspective could have changed throughout the story. For those who didn't assign a race to the characters, we could've used other means to decide the girl's social standings, like their economic situation or relationships(family and friends).   ...